Contents
League Overview
Screenshot from agent competition
Screenshot from virtual robot competition
The league consist of three competitions:
- The agent competition
- The infrastructure competition
- The virtual robot competition
During rescue operations after a disaster, cooperation is a must (Jennings et al, 1997). In
general the problem is not solvable by a single agent, and a heterogeneous team that dynamically
combines individual capabilities in order to solve the task is needed (Murphy et al. 2000). This requirement
is due to the structural diversity of disaster areas, variety of evidence
the sensors can perceive and to the necessity of quickly and reliably examining large regions.
Yet, the performance of a joint rescue team depends on assembling
the right mixture of capabilities and has to be designed as a whole. The goal of this league is to take this technological and scientific challenge and extend current rescue robot platforms with planning, learning, and information exchange capabilities needed to coordinate their efforts and to accomplish the rescue mission as a team.
Organization
Executive Committee (RoboCup 2019)
- Farshid Faraji, Bonab Islamic Azad University, Iran
- Luis Gustavo Nardin, Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany
- Masaru Shimizu, Chukyo University, Aichi, Japan
Technical Committee (RoboCup 2019)
- Agent competition
- Ali Modaresi, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
- Dina Helal, German University in Cairo, Egypt
- Virtual Robot competition
- Fatemeh Pahlevan Aghababa, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
- Amirreza Kabiri, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
- Josie Hughes, Cambridge University, UK
Executive Committee (RoboCup 2018)
- Arnoud Visser, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Farshid Faraji, Bonab Islamic Azad University, Iran
- Luis Gustavo Nardin, Brandenburg University of Technology, Germany
Technical Committee (RoboCup 2018)
- Agent competition
- Ali Modaresi, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
- Dina Helal, German University in Cairo, Egypt
- Virtual Robot competition
- Fatemeh Pahlevan Aghababa, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
- Masaru Shimizu, Chukyo University, Aichi, Japan
Organization Committee (RoboCup 2018)
- Local chair
- Maxime St-Pierre, Concordia University, Canada
- Agent competition
- Okan Aşık, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
- Kazunori Iwata, Aichi University, Japan
- Virtual Robot competition
- Sanaz Taleghani, Melbourne, Australia
- Francesco Amigoni, Politecnico de Milano, Italy
- Amirreza Kabiri, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
Rules
This is the list of rules of the both competitions:
| RoboCup event | Agent competition | Virtual Robot competition |
|---|---|---|
| Montreal 2018 | January 2018 | May, 2018 |
| Nagoya 2017 | February, 2017 | April, 2017 |
| Leipzig 2016 | May, 2016 | March, 2016 |
| Hefei 2015 | March, 2015 | January, 2015 |
| João Pessoa 2014 | January, 2014 | March, 2014 |
| Eindhoven 2013 | February, 2013 | April 22, 2013 |
| Mexico 2012 | January 13, 2012 | |
| Istanbul 2011 | January 12, 2011 | |
| Singapore 2010 | February 8, 2010 | June 15, 2010 |
| Graz 2009 | February 4, 2009 | June 9, 2009 |
| Suzhou 2008 | June 9, 2008 | June 4, 2008 |
| Atlanta 2007 | June 6, 2007 | June 20, 2007 |
| Bremen 2006 | May 23, 2006 | June, 2006 |
| Osaka 2005 | June 10, 2005 | |
| Lisbon 2004 | January 20, 2004 | |
| Padua 2003 | May 11, 2003 | |
| Fukuola 2002 | June 6, 2002 |
Teams
This is the alphabetic list of teams active in the League the last years, including links to their homepage and Team Description Papers:
| Agent competition | Infrastructure competition | Virtual Robot competition |
|---|---|---|
| Allameh Tabatabaei (2017) | AIT-Rescue (2018) | Amsterdam Oxford Joint Rescue Forces (2014,2011,2010,2009,2008) |
| anct_resq (2013, 2011) | BraveCircles (2010,2008) | Cambridge Robotics (2018) |
| Apollo Rescue (2017, 2015, 2013) | Hinomiyagura (2017, 2016,2015, 2014,2013,2011,2010,2009,2008) | Chukyo (2017a, 2017b) |
| RMAS_ArtSapience (2016, 2015, 2014,2013,2012,2011) | Jacobs Robotics (2008) | CSU YunLu (2016, 2008) |
| A.T.F. (2017) | Joint Rescue Forces (2018,2016,2014) | Edinbots (2018) |
| Aura (2017) | Kshitij (2010,2008 ) | Echoic (2017, 2016) |
| AUST Kylin (2015) | MRL (2018, 2016, 2015, 2014,2013,2012,2009) | eRobotica (2014,2008) |
| BonabRescue (2011,2010,2008) | NAITO (2015, 2014) | Hinomiyagura (2016, 2014,2013) |
| BraveCircles (2011,2008) | NewIdea (2008) | |
| CSU_YunLu (2017, 2015, 2014,2013,2008) | NIST Simmers (2010) | IUC (2009) |
| epicenter (2011) | PoAReT (2014) | IUST – Kaveh (2012),2008) |
| HfutEngineRescue (2011) | ResQ Freiburg (2009, 2006, 2005, 2004) | Jacobs Robotics (2009,2008) |
| IAMRescue (2011,2010,2008) | S.O.S. (2014,2013) | MRL (2017, 2016, 2014,2013, 2012, 2011,2010, 2009, 2008) |
| Impossibles (2008,2007) | Shabestar (2013) | NP.Solvers (2009) |
| IUST (2008) | UvA Rescue (2012, 2011, 2010) | Pasargad (2011) |
| Jacobs Robotics (2008) | SBCe_Saviour (2011,2009) | |
| Kherad (2016, 2015, 2014) | PoAReT (2013, 2012) | |
| LarvicSaurus (2017) | SEU RedSun (2011,2010, 2009,2008) | |
| LTI Agent Rescue (2013, 2011) | S.O.S. (2017, 2016) | |
| Lotus (2009) | STB (2009) | |
| MinERS (2013, 2009) | Steel (2010,2008) | |
| MRL (2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013,2012,2011,2010,2009,2008) | UC Merced (2009,2008) | |
| NAITO (2017, 2015, 2014,2013,2012,2011,2010,2009) | UPM-SPQR (2009,2008) | |
| NewIdea (2009) | UvA Rescue (2007, 2006) | |
| FC Portugal (2012) | Yildiz (2017, 2016, 2014,2013, 2012,2011) | |
| R.A.S. Roshd (2016) | ||
| Poseidon (2016, 2015, 2014,2013,2012,2011,2010,2009) | ||
| Ri-One (2017, 2016, 2015, 2014,2013,2012,2011,2010,2009,2008) | ||
| RoboAKUT (2017, 2015, 2014,2013,2012,2011,2010,2009,2008) | ||
| SBCe Saviour (2011,2010,2009,2008) | ||
| SEU_Jolly (2017, 2015, 2014,2011,2010,2009,2008) | ||
| S.O.S. (2017, 2015, 2014,2013,2012,2010,2009) | ||
| Suntori (2011,2010) | ||
| TsinghuAeolus (2008) | ||
| UvA Rescue (2014,2003) | ||
| YowAI (2008) | ||
| Y_rescue (2015) | ||
| ZJUBase (2014,2013,2012,2010,2009,2008) | ||
| 5Rings (2004) |
RoboCup Champions
| Agent competition | Infrastructure competition | Virtual Robot competition | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 1st Place Team | 2nd Place Team | 3rd Place Team | Winner | 1st Place Team | 2nd Place Team | 3rd Place Team | Year |
| 2001 | YabAI | Arian | ISI-JAIST | |||||
| 2002 | Arian | YabAI | NITrescue | |||||
| 2003 | Arian | YowAI | S.O.S. | |||||
| 2004 | ResQ Freiburg | DAMAS-Rescue | Caspian | ResQ Freiburg | ||||
| 2005 | Impossibles | Caspian | Kshitij | ResQ Freiburg | ||||
| 2006 | MRL | Poseidon | IUST | ResQ Freiburg | ResQ Freiburg | VirtualUB | UvArescue | 2006 |
| 2007 | MRL, IR | Impossibles | TsinghuaAeolus | AladdinRescue | Steel | Jacobs Rescue | SPQR Virtual | 2007 |
| 2008 | ZJUBase | Suntori | Impossibles | Brave Circles | SEU-RedSun | UC Merced | Steel | 2008 |
| 2009 | S.O.S. | MRL | Poseidon | ResQ Freiburg | UC Merced | SEU-RedSun | Amsterdam-Oxford | 2009 |
| 2010 | RoboAKUT | IAMrescue | ZJUBase | Brave Circles | SEU-RedSun | MRL | 2010 | |
| 2011 | SEU-RedSun | Poseidon | RMAS_ArtSapience | SBCe_Saviour | Pasargad | SEU-RedSun | 2011 | |
| 2012 | Ri-one | ZJUBase | AUT S.O.S. | UvA Rescue | PoAReT | Yildiz | 2012 | |
| 2013 | GUC_ArtSapience | AUT S.O.S. | MRL | MRL | MRL | 2013 | ||
| 2014 | S.O.S. | MRL | CSU_YunLu | Joint Rescue Forces | MRL | 2014 | ||
| 2015 | S.O.S. | MRL | SEU_Jolly | NAITO-Rescue | ||||
| 2016 | MRL | Poseidon | MRL | Yildiz | 2016 | |||
| 2017 | MRL | Aura | RoboAKUT | Hinomiyagura | Yildiz | S.O.S. | 2017 | |
| 2018 | MRL | Aura | Joint Rescue Forces | Cambridge Robotics | 2018 |
Research State of the Art
The state-in-the-art in the agent competition is that decisions can be made for more than 100 agents in 500ms. The team of fire agents are able to predict the spread of the fire, to cooperate to extinguish the most dangerous fires firs and able to contain the fire front to prevent major damage to the city. The ambulance agents have a search strategy, listening for victims, dig them out and transport to a hospital. The police agents support both other teams by clearing the most important routes. The teams in the competition have shown a steady progress in controlling larger teams under harsher conditions.
The state-of-the-art in the virtual robot competition is control system able to control a large team of robots with a single operator. To make this possible, the robots are able to create
a map of the disaster and use this map to make automatic decisions for an optimal search strategy. Several teams have shown that they are able to detect victims by processing the images from the robot camera,
based on features like color, shape and movement. Also other sources like sound are studied.
There is a selected list of the most influential on publications related to this league:
Separately, there are extensive chronological lists on publications related to both competitions:
- publications relevant to the Agent competition
- publications relevant to the Virtual Robot competition
In addition, there is an archive of
An recent overview of the developments in this league is given in this article in the AI magazine.
RoboCup 2018 Symposium
During the 2018 RoboCup Symposium, this paper was presented by members of this league:
- Masaru Shimizu and Tomoichi Takahashi. Survey of rescue competitions and proposal of new standard task from ordinary tasks, to be published in the Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series.
RoboCup 2017 Symposium
During the 2017 RoboCup Symposium, these papers was presented by members of this league:
- Shunki Takami, Kazuo Takayanagi, Shivashish Jaishy, Nobuhiro Ito, Kazunori Iwata, Yohsuke Murase and Takeshi Uchitane – Proposed environment to support development and experiment in RoboCupRescue Simulation, in RoboCup 2017: Robot World Cup XXI, the Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series, volume 11175, 2018.
- Enric Cervera, Gustavo Casañ and Ricardo Tellez – Cloud Simulations for RoboCup, in RoboCup 2017: Robot World Cup XXI, the Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series, volume 11175, 2018.
RoboCup 2016 Symposium
During the 2016 RoboCup Symposium, this two papers were presented by members of this league:
- Masaru Shimizu, Masayuki Okugawa, Katsuji Oogane, Yoshikazu Ohtsubo, Tetsuya Kimura, Tomoichi Takahashi and Satoshi Tadokoro – Standard Rescue Tasks Based on the Japan Virtual Robotics Challenge, in RoboCup 2016: Robot World Cup XX, the Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series, volume 9776, 2017, p. 243-255.
- Okan Aşık and H. Levent Akin –Effective Multi-Robot Spatial Task Allocation using Model Approximations, in RoboCup 2016: Robot World Cup XX, the Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series, volume 9776, 2017, p. 440-451.
RoboCup 2015 Symposium
During the 2015 RoboCup Symposium, this paper was presented by members of this league:
- Masaru Shimizu, Nate Koenig, Arnoud Visser and Tomoichi Takahashi – A realistic RoboCup Rescue Simulation based on Gazebo, in RoboCup 2015: Robot World Cup XIX, Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series, volume 9513, 2016, p. 331-338.
RoboCup 2014 Symposium
During the 2014 RoboCup Symposium, a number of papers were presented by members of this league:
- Victor Spirin, Julian de Hoog, Arnoud Visser and Stephen Cameron – MRESim, a multi-robot exploration simulator for Rescue Simulation League, in RoboCup 2014: Robot World Cup XVIII, Springer Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series 2015, p. 106-117.
- Arnoud Visser, Nobuhiro Ito and Alexander Kleiner – RoboCup Rescue Simulation Innovation Strategy, Proceedings of the 18th RoboCup Symposium, Special Track on the advancement of the RoboCup Leagues, João Pessoa – Brazil, July, 2014.
- Tomoichi Takahashi and Masaru Shimizu – How can the RoboCup Rescue Simulation contribute to emergency preparedness in real-world disaster situations?, Proceedings of the 18th RoboCup Symposium, João Pessoa, July 2014.
- Iván Riaño and Arnoud Visser – Mid-Term report ‘Establishing bonds for the advancement of the Rescue League’, Proceedings of the 18th RoboCup Symposium, Projects Promoting RoboCup, João Pessoa, July 13, 2014
Earlier publications
Earlier publications can be found at the League’s history page:
- the RoboCup 2013 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2012 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2011 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2010 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2009 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2008 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2007 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2006 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2005 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2004 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2003 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2002 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2001 Symposium
- the RoboCup 2000 Symposium
Other Information
Both competitions have a Frequent Asked Questions list:
Both competitions have a mailing list:
References
- Raymond Sheh, Sören Schwertfeger and Arnoud Visser, “16 Years of RoboCup Rescue”, KI – Künstliche Intelligenz, Volume 30, Issue 3, October 2016
- Arnoud Visser, Nobuhiro Ito and Alexander Kleiner, “RoboCup Rescue Simulation Innovation Strategy”, in the Proceedings of the 18th RoboCup Symposium, João Pessoa – Brazil, July, 2014.
- H. Levent Akın, Nobuhiro Ito, Adam Jacoff, Alexander Kleiner, Johannes Pellenz and Arnoud Visser , “RoboCup Rescue Robot and Simulation Leagues”, AI Magazine, Vol 34, No.1, pp.78-86, 2013.
- Cameron Skinner and Sarvapali Ramchurn, “The RoboCup rescue simulation platform”, Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS’10) – Volume 1, Pages 1647-1648, 2010.
- Stephen Balakirsky, Stefano Carpin, Alexander Kleiner, Michael Lewis, Arnoud Visser, Jijun Wang and Vittorio Amos Ziparo, “Towards heterogeneous robot teams for disaster mitigation: Results and performance metrics from RoboCup rescue”, Journal of Field Robotics, Volume 24, Issue 11-12, pages 943–967, 2007.
- Cameron Skinner and Mike Barley, “Robocup Rescue Simulation Competition: Status Report”, in ‘RoboCup 2005: Robot Soccer World Cup IX’, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 4020, pp 632-639, 2006.
- H. Kitano and S. Tadokoro, “A grand challenge for multiagent and intelligent systems”, AI Magazine 22:39–52, 2001.
- Murphy et al. (2000) Mixed-initiative control of multiple heterogeneous robots for usar. Technical Report CRASAR-TR2000-11, Center for Robot Assisted Search & Rescue, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
- Jennings et al. (1997) Cooperative search and rescue with a team of mobile robots. In Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Advanced Robotics (ICAR), pages 193–200
About this page
All older information on this page, which now seems to be outdated, has been moved to the Rescue_Simulation_League_History page.
This page is moderated by Arnoud Visser. Contact him with suggestions.